The present invention relates to broadcast communications systems, and more specifically concerns such systems in which each item to be broadcast designates a particular destination receiver or group of receivers.
A conventional radio pager service broadcast contemplates a single series of data items individually addressed to particular receivers. Some services have the original caller speak a short (analog) spoken message for the receiver (spoken message systems). Other systems have the original caller press a few buttons indicating a phone number for the receiving user to call to answer the page (digital number storage systems). Receiver devices of the latter type allow storage of a few (perhaps 8) of the numbers of the most recent pages.
Additionally, the listeners of the spoken-message type systems must be available and interrupt what they are doing at the time the items are transmitted; delayed listening via recording is not very practical. The analog voice nature of radio broadcasts also makes them rather wasteful of scarce spectrum resources. The page message of today's systems is necessarily very short: ten seconds of spoken message, or a single digitally coded telephone number.
Solutions to the above problems still fall short in many respects. The recipient must read a tiny display, or attend to any message being broadcast. A large number of people who need to be paged with electronic mail and other individualized messages could benefit greatly from a service using the paradigm of a radio text broadcast which can be individually targeted to particular users' or listeners' specific interests, and which can be listened to at any time convenient to them.